The Hurricane
by Myra109
Summary: Tony couldn't talk Clay down from that ledge. In the end, Clay is reunited with Hannah, and in the land of the living, Clay's death starts a new butterfly effect, just as Hannah's did. AU, character deaths, canon-typical stuff such as suicide, drug abuse, mentions of rape, etc. (If you are triggered by any of these issues, please be cautious when reading).


_WARNINGS: MULTIPLE CHARACTER DEATHS, SUICIDE, MENTIONS OF DRUG/ALCOHOL ABUSE, MENTIONS OF RAPE, GUN VIOLENCE (THE SPRING FORMAL), CANON TYPICAL STUFF. PLEASE, IF YOU WILL BE TRIGGERED, BE SAFE AND HIT THE BACK BUTTON. THANK YOU._

_Also, there are NO spoilers for season 3 in this story._

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Thirteen Reasons Why.**_

* * *

He'll never get married.

He'll never have kids.

He'll never graduate high school.

He'll never get justice for Hannah.

He'll never breathe again.

* * *

**Clay was the first.**

"Clay, I think you need to get back from that edge."

Why? Clay wondered. Who would care if he just jumped? He was a killer. He killed Hannah Baker; he killed the love of his life because he was afraid to love her. Not only that, but he killed three people with one careless, selfish, stupid action. He left Hannah at that party instead of staying there and talking to her; if he had stayed, she would be alive today.

He left; Hannah was alone with no reassurance that anyone, much less a guy, could truly love her because Clay… Clay hadn't stayed to make sure she understood that he loved her for everything she was. He didn't tell her he loved her when he should have.

He left, and Bryce raped Jessica. Jessica wasn't technically dead, but Clay knew that a part of her was. A part of her had died in that bedroom when Bryce forced himself on her, and even in her ignorance of the event, that piece was dead and gone, and maybe Jessica knew that something wasn't the same after that party. Either way, she couldn't be sheltered by amnesia and lies and denial forever. She would find out what happened; she would know it was true, that Hannah hadn't lied. And when that happened… Clay was afraid of what would happen to her.

He left, and Sheri knocked down the stop sign, which killed Jeff.

He left, and Hannah Baker witnessed a rape and had to live with the knowledge that she had been in the car that knocked down a stop sign, causing an accident that injured a man and killed a teenage boy. He left, and Hannah Baker killed herself.

Hannah was right. The Butterfly Effect. His departure was the flap of the butterfly's wings that started the hurricane.

"Why?" Clay voiced aloud. "Why shouldn't I just jump?"

"Clay, you couldn't have changed anything! You're not God. You couldn't have known what would happen, and killing yourself will not bring Hannah back!" Tony shouted.

"But there will be one less killer in the world," Clay whispered. "I love you, Tony. I'm sorry… for everything."

"CLAY!"

But it was too late. Clay stepped off of the cliff, and he fell, the wind ripping at his hoodie, to the sound of Tony desperately screaming above him.

He vaguely wondered why Tony sounded so afraid. After all, Clay had killed Hannah and Jeff by inaction. Clay hated himself and certainly didn't care if he died; why should Tony or anyone else care?

Clay found himself thinking of whether he would feel it when he hit or if he would die instantly. He supposed it didn't really matter because he didn't even remember hitting the ground. He didn't even remember coming close to it.

No. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them, he found himself staring at Hannah Baker across an empty gymnasium identical to the Winter Formal, minus the people and the smell of sweaty teenagers and booze.

It was just him and Hannah, the sound of _The Night We Met_ playing in the background.

Clay took the first step, and Hannah smiled as she stood as well, stepping off of the bleachers and heading towards him, a sad smile on her face.

"I don't think we ever got to finish our dance, milady," Clay said, bowing slightly as the two of them came to a stop less than a foot from each other.

"Our _first_ dance," Hannah corrected. "After all, we have all the time in the world, Sir Helmet, although I wish you would have made me wait a little longer. Haven't you ever heard of being fashionably late?"

"Haven't you ever heard of being depressingly early?" Clay shot back. Not bitterly, just stating a fact.

Hannah smiled, and this time, it was still sad but also holding acceptance. I guess Hannah understood something that Clay never did: guilt can't bring someone back to life.

"I guess you have a point," Hannah agreed.

Clay held out his hand. "I love you, Hannah Baker."

Hannah accepted his hand and responded, "I love you, too, Clay Jensen."

Two lovers danced and swayed to the melody of Their Song. They kissed and talked and loved and lived in death in a way they never lived in life.

After all, they only had eternity to spend with each other.

* * *

I guess the same can't be said for the people on the other side, the ones who would have to _wait_ eternity to see their friends again.

**Tony watched Clay die, and he never truly got over it. I didn't see him as much as some of the others did, but every time I did, I could see this brokenness in his eyes.**

**I understood. After all, he had lost his brother.**

Tony wasn't sure how long he laid there, his stomach pressed against the earth, his hand reaching towards the abyss Clay had simply jumped into like it was nothing. His hand grasped empty air and hung limply over the ledge, as if he was still reaching for a boy that had long since smashed into the ground.

Tony's screams silenced eventually, and all that was left was an emptiness deep in his chest. He didn't even move when police cars arrived below to take care of the dead body, as if that dead body hadn't once been a person with thoughts and feelings and a beating heart in their chest.

Tony only moved when he was wrenched to his feet, and he didn't protest when his hands were handcuffed behind his back with more force than necessary.

"I finally got you now, Padilla," one of the officers he hated the most but never bothered to remember the name of hissed in his ear.

**Tony was arrested that night and charged with murder, the police officers that hated Tony twisting the story. I can still remember the things they said about Tony Padilla. 'A deranged colored criminal with a history of violence pushed his 'friend' off a cliff because… well, who knows why?' Apparently, the motive, which the police officers conveniently forgot to mention, didn't matter because Tony was sentenced to 25 years in prison a few months later.**

**Mr. and Mrs. Jensen knew Tony would never do that. They had also suspected Clay of being suicidal, but Mrs. Jensen couldn't defend Tony because her kid was the victim. Their hands were tied.**

**That didn't stop them from working to get Tony out of jail until Mrs. Jensen died in a car crash due to drunk driving (she developed quite an alcohol problem after Clay died). Mr. Jensen moved out of the town, and I never saw him again.**

**Tony, on the other hand, was beaten to death by another inmate when he was twenty-seven.**

"So I'll see you around?" Bryce questioned.

"No, I don't think you will," Justin replied, and Bryce didn't know how to respond to that, so he only watched as Justin disappeared into the alley.

This time, no one came to save him from himself.

**Justin overdosed after about eight months on the streets. He received no help or love.**

**Justin died at seventeen- alone, homeless, friendless, and without a family.**

Jessica downed another bottle, wondering how much she had to drink to force herself to forget.

The answer was: a lot, but when the alcohol inevitably wore off, Jessica was left with her memories and her thoughts and her shame.

So she drank more. She never seemed to stop drinking, and this time, no one was there to get Bryce's confession or to give her hope that her rapist could go to jail.

**Bryce never went to jail, not that Jessica even considered the possibility of Bryce going to jail. He was rich and white and a jock and popular with a lot of allies in his corner. There were no living witnesses, and Jessica didn't think she could ever testify against her rapist.**

**She drank to forget until the drinking caused her to fade away entirely.**

**Jessica Davis died of alcohol poisoning when she was twenty years old.**

Alex shot himself in the head less than a week after Clay jumped off that cliff. He still survived, but a few months later, he came home, stressed and scared and frustrated, and this time, he had no one to text to give him the tapes.

It seems like such a small thing, but later, when his memories started coming back, they came back in bits and pieces. Hearing the tapes would have been very sudden, a shock, yes, but getting the memories back little by little was worse.

When the memory of that night, the night Hannah was raped, hit him, Alex suddenly understood why he did what he did.

Alex's mind went blank, and when it came back to him, he was in the afterlife with Hannah and Clay.

**Alex hung himself. He didn't leave a note this time, so no one really knew why he did it, but since his attitude towards his last attempt was more angry at having failed than sad at having done it in the first place, no one was surprised.**

**It was less than a year after he shot himself.**

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Liberty High students were dropping like flies, blood staining the floor of the gym like a grotesque art project. Screaming mingled with the bangs of gunshots; the lucky ones (if you can call them that. Some were in therapy for decades) managed to escape out the doors, but by the time the shots stopped, the majority of the people at the dance were lying dead on the floor.

Tyler raised the gun to his mouth and pulled the trigger.

There was no one there to stop Tyler this time.

**The day of the Spring Formal, over a hundred kids died, including Tyler. Courtney, Ryan, Marcus, Bryce, and Zach were among them.**

Sheri never came forward about what happened to Jeff. When she was twenty-two, on the anniversary of the car crash that she had unintentionally caused, the guilt hit her.

She walked into traffic and didn't walk back out.

**Sheri killed herself, and her note was short:**

**I'm sorry.**

**Most assumed her note meant she was sorry for killing herself. Some thought she was apologizing for being selfish or weak or cowardly or whatever. The majority believed she was sorry for doing this and putting her loved ones through so much pain. Some people, like me, knew what her apology was really for.**

**Hannah Baker was only the beginning, but Clay Jensen was the beginning of the end.**

**So that leaves me, I guess. The only 'Reason' still alive.**

**It's been thirty-four years since Hannah Baker died. I'm in my seventies, and my heart's starting to get weak. Possibly from all the fractures and cracks and beatings its endured throughout the years.**

**I wanted this story to be told before my time runs out. One suicide started a chain reaction. The Butterfly Effect really didn't act in their favor, in any of our favors. To most people, Hannah Baker, Justin Foley, Jessica Davis, Alex Standall, Tyler Down, Courtney Crimson, Marcus Cole, Ryan Shaver, Sheri Holland, Bryce Walker, Clay Jensen, and Tony Padilla are just names, a few more tragic deaths in a world of tragic deaths. But they were more than that. They were people with stories, and those stories needed to be told.**

**That is why I have decided to release the tapes, including this new addition, so that you all will know that those names were more than just names. This can't happen again, and however unlikely it may be, I hope this story can prevent history from repeating itself.**

**The stories have been told. It's too late to save those kids, but it's not too late for them to be remembered.**

**This is Kevin Porter, signing off on Tape 14.**

* * *

_Thanks for reading. If you are suffering with any of these issues, such as suicidal thoughts, PTSD, addiction, depression, or others, please seek help. Reach out to someone and talk about it because talking may be hard at first, but it does make things better in the long run. I know it doesn't seem like it now, but as someone who has experienced mental illness, I can tell you that there is a light at the end of the tunnel._


End file.
